An Alaskan journalist's perspective on local and national issues

Posts tagged ‘Focus on the Family’

Whenever somebody is looking to promote an idea that the religious groups in this country at large don’t agree with, have you ever noticed a pattern? The pattern that these groups will have their members come out of the woodwork and claim “religious freedom.” It is such a clever line, and through it, all kinds of hatred and bigotry are able to be defended.

There is a new battle against anti-gay bullying in schools. It is being led by Focus on the Family. They claim that this new legislation isn’t just about preventing kids from bullying LGBT students, but is about “indocrination” and “promoting homosexuality.” It fails to register to them that this is blatantly untrue. These laws in various states are designed to protect LGBT youth from being bullied because they are gay. No child deserves the right to be bullied. But according to Focus on the Family, not only do these kids deserved to be bullied, but to stop them from being bullied is against “religious freedom.”

Of course, this card has been pulled before. When Obama said that the new health care law had a section in it that said that health insurance providers had to cover contraception at no cost to the patient, the Catholics came out of the woodwork, claiming that denying women access to birth control, which has health benefits far-beyond just preventing pregnancy, was within the purview of “religious freedom.” Never mind that this was about insurance providers, not religious organizations. They wanted to make a stand against it anyway.

This argument of “religious freedom” is so unbelievably worthless in the grand scope of things. By the arguments that have been made, people like Hitler could have claimed that we were against his “religious freedom.” Think about it – his Roman Catholic beliefs guided his actions. He believed that it was what God would have wanted – for him to killl Jews. When the Allies fought against him, he could have claimed that we were hurting his “religious freedom.” This argument holds no water, because it is always proven to be blatantly false.

How is the freedom to worship whatever deity you choose hurt by legislation that protects LGBT students? How are you suddenly unable to believe in the religious system of your choice when insurance providers are told that they have to cover contraception?

Or a little closer to home – how are the religious suddenly made unable to go to their religious institution because members of the LGBT community aren’t able to be discriminated against in regards to housing and hiring and firing? The argument by Protect Your Rights was that this law which failed to pass, Proposition 5, was hurting “religious freedom.” But how has it ever been hurt by any of these pieces of legislation?

The fact is that this reasoning is simply a rallying cry to the bigots in this country. It can boiled down as simply as that. Think about this – Focus on the Family openly admitted that there shouldn’t be laws in place to protect gay students. They are perfectly fine with bullying. They are openly condoning the behavior of the worst of us. Of course, they won’t admit that.

That’s the ultimate truth – these groups can’t admit the ugliness of their own position, because if they did, we would reject them. We would reject their ideology based solely on hatred, lies, and the public at large being unable to question or fight against it. This religious demagoguery goes largely unchallenged, because people don’t want to talk about stuff like this, or debate stuff like this. The idea seems to be that we don’t have the right to call a spade a spade.

Or a bigot a bigot. The simple truth is that these groups of people are merely finding a very poetic cover, for their own bigotry. And meanwhile, students, women, and people just trying to live their lives, are the ones to suffer. Our government does little to nothing to stop this bigotry.

There was a panel discussion about Proposition 5 at UAA tonight. For the few Anchorage residents who don’t know, there is an issue that is up for a vote on April 3rd. It is to extend the Title 5 protections, Sections 1-8, to include sexual orientation as a protected status when seeking employment or residence.

Like Ordinance 64, this issue is generating a great deal of criticism from the Christian-right. The organizations leading the “Protect your Rights” (the opposition) effort are the Alaska Family Council and Focus on the Family. One Anchorage is heading up the efforts in support of this proposition.

The attendence to this panel discussion was beyond dismal. There were 23 people in total. There was nobody from the opposition, including as one of the speakers. it seems the speaker against it was going to be Daniel MacDonald. There were two speakers in support, Brett Frazer, and a man named Blake. MacDonald was all the only opposition, because Jim Minnery, the President of Alaska Family Council, could not find a student to represent the AFC.

Frazer opened by saying that he had a family member (whose name he withheld for privacy reasons) who had been in the military, and was finally able to come out with the veto of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. However, even with that, she was still discriminated against, both at work and in her daily life. Her partner feared daily if it ever got out that she was a partner to another woman. There was a rather appropriate quote by Frazer –

“Discrimination is still very real in Anchorage.”

Next up there was the opening argument by Blake. He had three points. The first was that descrimination still exists. When Mayor Dan Sullivan vetoed Ordinance 64, he remarked that discrimination no longer exists, which was his justification for doing so. The second was that employees are being fired for being gay. In some cases, a boss can look at your Facebook page and can use that as a way to find out who you are. The third was that this wasn’t just hurting people’s livelihoods’, but also doing societal damage.

Since there was nobody to speak for the opposition, the floor opened up to questions. The first was if a person could be sent to jail or fined because of Prop. 5. Brett took this, and the answer was – only if they lied to investigators. However, this had nothing to do with Prop. 5.

The next question was – if there was a case made for discrimination, where was the burden of proof? Again, Brett took this. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. And they only have a limited window to make it – 180 days. There is a public hearing (which is an odd term, considering that they are private), which does not fit with the opposition’s narrative that there is no hearing, and the book gets immediately thrown at businesses.

The big question that has been fueling the opposition against Prop. 5 is – will this affect religious freedom? The answer was obviously no. Proposition 5 affects Title 5, sections 1-8, but not section 9. Section 9 is in reference to religious institutions. Only for-profit businesses will feel the brunt of this. Of course, it was also brought up – what constitutes a religious institution? What about religious campgrounds? Brett and Blake acknowledged that there was some ambiguity in regards to that, but churches were guaranteed to not be affected. However, Brett made a point that this ambiguity was not a reason to vote against it, but rather to lobby to have some work done on this law.

One point that Brett made was saying what Prop. 5 is not. It is not, “equal rights for everybody.” In fact, this does not give the LGBTQ community the same rights as everybody else. Instead, it gets them 90% of the way there. This is the best that the gay community could hope for. That’s depressing enough in and of itself.

Since this was an incredibly fast discussion, because of the dismal attendence and there being no identifiable presence against Prop. 5, they moved on to the closing statements. Brett said that he didn’t want to wake up on April 4th and find Anchorage the same place it was. That this proposition needed to pass.

Blake then said that Title 5 works, and the oppositions scare tactics against this Proposition were simply unfounded. There have been no massive imprisonments and fines. This law works, and that Prop. 5 needed to be add sexual orientation to the groups of people who can’t be discriminated against.

And that’s it. Quick, simple, and totally, totally pointless. There was one attendee, a UAA student named Ceezar Martinson, who had the best thoughts about this. This night was a complete waste of time for two reasons. 1. the turnout is pathetic. This is a very clear indicator of how many people actually care about their democracy, and their future. Even if you knew how you were going to vote, as Brett said, by being in that room, we were already more enlightened than those not in the room, because we were hearing about this issue, and good questions were being asked.

2. The opposition didn’t even care enough to show up. Everybody seems so sure that this is going to pass. Everybody I have talked to. They seem to think that no significant number of people would vote against it. But as was seen with Ordinance 64, the opposition to this is fierce, and there is a very good chance that this proposition will fail. And when it does, the voters will have nobody to blame but themselves. The opposition is real, and they are doing their damndest to make sure that their base is out there, voting against this.

So, if Proposition 5 fails, it will be because when there are people trying to reach out to the community and keep them informed, they don’t even bother to show up, or get the people they know who are confused to go and learn. This is voter failure, and I am starting to not have sympathy for these people.